WHY?

[Cutz]

to be fair, WW2 what got us in the game was the fucking japs.
Might have happened if not for Pearl Harbor, but would have taken a while.

America's involvement in the war is not why we're policing the globe, more the example of the war. After WW1, all the European nations were so timid in order to avoid a second world war, that they let Germany grow and start it anyway. America had been enjoying that isolationist movement that other countries are enjoying now, but Pearl Harbor just woke the dragon. We really scared Japan so bad that we wouldn't still be involving ourselves around the world if it was purely a reaction to us being attacked in WW2. It's more the example that WW2 broke out because nobody wanted to police other countries for fear of another world war.

That said, of course I'd prefer America to defend other countries than to attack other countries... i.e South Korea as opposed to Iraq. I don't feel we have a right to dictate what types of governments should oversee other countries, but at the same time, those nations that throw rocks at America's foreign policy of involvement only do so enjoying the freedom it ensures.